Friday, February 23, 2007

A beady post, with a little bit of stitching too :)

I made this a few weeks ago and have only just now remembered to take a photo of it! The pic isn't great, sorry, but this one was the best one of the lot :/

It is "La Heather Ice", a Mill Hill La Petite Purse Pin kit that I found whilst rummaging through my bead stash. I wasn't in a stitching mood so I went looking for inspiration :) It was my first experience with the Mill Hill Magnifica beads and I must say it was fun (so much so that I've ordered a couple more kits - lol) and it only took me an afternoon.

It also makes it my first finish for 2007!

Thank you for your lovely comments re Sea of Roses. Michelle, to answer you question, yes, I do find it easier to stitch one colour first then the next. I've tried parking and it just confuses me (I'm blonde - it doesn't take much - lol!). I must admit I do chop and change the way I stitch my HAEDs. Sometimes I'll work in 10 x 10 columns like Verdure (although you will notice from my last WIP pic that I've started going cross country on that) but mostly I'm a cross country stitcher within a page. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I've put her away for now and moved on to DT's An Open Heart which is causing me a little bit of grief at the moment. There is a band which requires you to cut and withdraw threads then reweave. The instructions are excellent and I don't have a problem with the actual process, it is the linen that I'm having trouble with. I am using the recommended linen (34ct Cafe au Lait Legacy Linen) and up to this point I've had no problems. However, though I'm taking this particular band slowly and with great care, the linen is weak and breaks very easily which is so not what I need when I have to reweave the threads! It is also fluffing and just being very difficult to handle.

You can see the section in question - with the green honeycomb hem stitch (please don't look too closely though - there is a slight boo-boo which I'll need to fix somehow). I've got a section of plain cross stitch and then another band of the drawn thread work. I'm expecting it will be a pain but I will soldier on :) As far as I can tell that's the only band with that technique so it should be smooth sailing from the next band on!

I'm doing An Open Heart at the moment and am so not looking forward to that band with the re-weaving. Some ladies have tied another thread to the linen thread to make it easier (& longer) to re-weave. I may try that.

AOH is one of my favorite designs, altho I haven't stitched it yet. I've done other designs with hemstitching and run into some of the same difficulties you have with the linen threads breaking. One solution you might try sometime is to withdraw a fabric thread from the side of the design and use it to reweave in the design area. Email me if you have any questions. :D